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From: pur-ee!giacomet@venus.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederic B Giacometti)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: HENRY & JUNE
Summary: r.a.m.r. #00831a
Keywords: author=Giacometti, translator=Brader/Giacometti
Message-ID: <1990Nov13.140126.18632@cbnewsj.att.com>
Date: 13 Nov 90 14:01:26 GMT
Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Reply-To: pur-ee!giacomet@venus.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederic B Giacometti), msb@sq.com, (Mark Brader)
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
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[Moderator's note: This translation to r.a.m.r. #831 was provided
by Mark Brader and approved by the author.]

                                 HENRY AND JUNE
                    1930's Paris in the American unconscious
                      A film review by Frederic Giacometti
                     Translated from French by Mark Brader
                 (with help from his dictionary and the author)
                       Copyright 1990 Frederic Giacometti

     Here is the latest Philip Kaufman film: HENRY AND JUNE, or the
story of the literary-erotic-love relationship of Henry Miller, Anais
Nin, and June Miller, in Paris about 1932.

     Philip Kaufman seems to have a passion for European erotic-
intellectual stories.  After THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, now he
delivers us HENRY AND JUNE.  First an observation: to the little
brunettes that we'll discover from all possible views and angles during
the film, he loves to give a strong French accent, to the point of
heaviness in the English version.

     All this is to say that this film is heavy.  Very heavy.  Even
though the technical quality is good, and the storyline (adapted from
Anais Nin's memoirs) is well structured, the dialogues, especially those
of love, are frighteningly platitudinous.  It reminds me of EMANUELLE:
one of the silliest films I've seen.  This is certainly not de Laclos
[author of LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES --trans.], nor Maupassant.

     The director's intention for Henry Miller to appear as an artist
"in research" ends up giving him the behavior of a pig throughout the
film; in fact, he talks like a pig, guzzles like a pig, kisses like a
pig, and acts like a pig.  It's heavy, and the cliches are muddy.

     But, finally, the most remarkable point of this film is this
mysterious image of Paris and the French people of the 1930s that is
revealed to us.  The hot-pot in the kitchen, the cheese souffle, the
sponge cake of Proust, the common people's holiday-eve dinners, the
gentle pickpockets, the whores and brothels, the cops on bicycles (with
the kepi replaced, outrageously, with a modern cap!).  All that's
missing to complete the tableau is the chickens walking in the kitchen.

     The American unconscious offers us a description of the place of
perdition, where American intellectuals would go to lose themselves in
vice at a time of Prohibition in America.  What pandemonium!  It breeds
in the streets themselves during the hazing at the Beaux-Arts school.
Philip Kaufman should not let himself work on postcards.